Editorial: No need to fear fracking

2013-01-04 16:13:47

California is sitting on the largest deposit of shale oil in the United States, some 15 billion barrels. But the state's activist environmental groups insist the black gold remain in the ground because its extraction requires hydraulic fracturing, known more controversially as "fracking."

Fracturing entails underground injection of water and chemicals to break up underground rock formations. The drilling technique has been used, safely, in California for 50 years. However, environmental groups now contend that hydraulic fracturing damages wells and pollutes water.

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has sought to address those concerns. The state Department of Conservation recently released draft fracturing regulations that would, for the first time, require oil producers to disclose where exactly around the state they employ the technique.

The draft rules also include provisions for pre-fracturing well-testing, advanced notification of drilling, monitoring during and after fracturing operations, disclosure of materials used in fracturing fluids, and storage and handling of those fluids.

Yet, such groups as the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Working Group, the Sierra Club and Earthworks remain unsatisfied. They continue to press a lawsuit, filed in October in Alameda County Superior Court, which asks the court to halt fracturing statewide.

But the center and its co-plaintiffs ignore the result of a recently released fracturing study, which was required as part of a 2011 legal settlement between community and environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Plains Exploration and Production Co., owner and operator of the Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County.

The 206-page study, the first of its kind in the state, examined the threats fracturing posed to air and water, not to mention risks of increased seismic activity caused by drilling. It concluded there was no danger to public health and safety.

The findings of the Inglewood study were received with suspicion by the community and environmental groups that continue to oppose fracking but the study jibes with similar findings of Ken Salazar, the Obama administration's Interior secretary, who is much esteemed by such environmental groups as the League of Conservation Voters.

"There's a lot of hysteria that takes place now with respect to hydraulic fracturing," Mr. Salazar said in congressional testimony. "My point of view, based on my own study of hydraulic fracturing, is that it can be done safely and has been done safely hundreds of thousands of times."

Indeed, the weight of objective scientific evidence suggests that fracturing is a safe technique. Properly regulated, there is no reason for California to restrict it.